From Darkened Rooms Part 2
I'm still in pain, still stuck in the dark.
It's now been 43 days of this excruciating headache. Some days are better, and some are worse. I have days where I can tolerate low light from a lamp out of my field of vision, and I have other days where I can't do anything but lay in a dark room with a towel covering my eyes. Many days I can handle the computer for brief periods as long as all other lights are off (thank goodness I can type without needing to look at the keyboard), and those are days I enjoy the most because I can write.
I had my MRI on Monday and got the results back on Wednesday. There was nothing visible on the scan, so no tumors or anything really frightening. Now my automatic jump to the worst thing possible has been neutralized because it's definitely not a tumor.
My doctor has referred me to a neurologist, but no appointment yet scheduled. Hopefully, they'll be able to give me some answers.
However, my mom found some interesting information about people having post-COVID headaches that last for weeks or months. They're debilitating headaches, and the symptoms match mine exactly. If I had COVID, it was asymptomatic, and I never knew about it. The question is, if this is the case, can they treat it? Will they be able to ease the pain? Or am I doomed to suffer for months and miss the beautiful weather we get in summer in the Pacific Northwest?
I'm not a doctor and can't make any kind of diagnosis, and I try not to worry about what a diagnosis of this could be, though with my greatest fear ruled out, I'm not sure what to worry about now. That's seems like a good thing, but now my anxiety is spinning without focus and it's actually kind of worse because every little thing I experience, like a repeated itch in the same spot, is now something to panic over. It's easier to deal with my anxiety when it has a focus because I can tackle the specific fear and work my anxiety down to a point where I can deal with it using logic and coping skills. When I have no focus, I can't do that.
My mom and I joke about me being the superhero Anxiety Girl, able to jump to the worst possible scenario in a single bound. We also joke that I should hire myself out as a professional panicker and I can just panic about situations for other people so they don't have to. Laughing about the anxiety helps me keep a lighthearted view of it, though my psychiatrist takes it seriously and treats me with medication to help ease it.
So, while I feel better because I have no tumor, I'm still having a great deal of anxiety over this headache. I hope it's something diagnosable and treatable so I can get back to normal life. My husband and I usually go to our local forest preserve for a hike around now, but I can't even look out the window without pain, let alone going outside to enjoy the weather. I hope this eases soon so I can enjoy summer when it arrives. Around here, summer weather doesn't come around until July, but it has been growing warmer and sunnier as May progresses. That has been weighing on me because I'm missing spring. I missed the cherry blossoms that only stick around for about a month. Now the rhododendrons are blooming, and if this doesn't end soon, I'll miss those as well.
I bought a new camera to take nature photos because I love it so much, and the camera arrived just after this headache started so I haven't been able to use it even though I've had it for over a month. I hope I can use it soon.
Right now, the only nature I can enjoy is through the nature videos I love so much. Here's another one from The Silent Watcher.
Comments
Post a Comment